United States presidential election, 1920
11.4% | image1 = | nominee1 = Hiram Johnson | party1 = Republican Party (United States) | home_state1 = California | running_mate1 = Irvine Lenroot | electoral_vote1 = 417 | states_carried1 = 38 | popular_vote1 = 16,795,498 | percentage1 = 62.1% | image2 = | nominee2 = A. Mitchell Palmer | party2 = Democratic Party (United States) | home_state2 = Pennsylvania | running_mate2 = Lawrence Tyson | electoral_vote2 = 114 | states_carried2 = 10 | popular_vote2 = 8,261,233 | percentage2 = 30.5% | image3 = | nominee3 = Eugene V. Debs | party3 = Socialist Party of America | home_state3 = Indiana | running_mate3 = Seymour Stedman | electoral_vote3 = 0 | states_carried3 = 0 | popular_vote3 = 1,127,269 | percentage3 = 4.1% | map_size = 400px | map_image = ElectoralCollege1920.svg | map_caption = Presidential election results map Red denotes states won by Johnson/Lenroot Blue denotes those won by Palmer/Tyson Numbers indicate the number of electoral votes allotted to each state | title = President | before_election = Woodrow Wilson | before_party = Democratic Party (United States) | after_election = Hiram Johnson | after_party = Republican Party (United States) }} The United States presidential election of 1920 was the 34th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 2, 1920. In the first election held after the end of the Great War and the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, Republican Senator Hiram Johnson defeated Democratic Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and imprisoned Socialist Activist Eugene V. Debs Both primaries were tense. Incumbent Democratic President Woodrow Wilson had hoped for a third term, but this was rejected by party leaders due to his unpopularity. Former President Theodore Roosevelt had been the front-runner for the Republican nomination, but he died in 1919 without leaving an obvious heir to his progressive legacy. Ultimately, the liberal progressive Hiram Johnson was nominated as the Republican candidate. He was close to Theodore Roosevelt, having been his Vice Presidential candidate during their unsuccessful third party bid in 1912, and received the backing of Roosevelt's supporters. His extreme isolationism had significant support from both factions of the party, and he proved to be the strongest candidate in the primaries. On the Democratic side, the conservative anti-socialist A. Mitchell Palmer was nominated. Although his nomination was opposed by labor groups, he had a narrow lead in the primaries and ultimately the party leadership believed he could use Johnson's liberal progressiveness against him. The election was dominated by the American social and political environment in the aftermath of the Great War, which was marked by a hostile reaction to Wilsonian foreign policy and to some aspects of the reformist Progressive Era. The wartime economic boom had collapsed and the country was deep in a recession. Wilson's advocacy for American cooperation with Europe in the face of a return to non-interventionist opinion challenged his effectiveness as president and overseas, there were wars and revolutions. At home, the year 1919 was marked by major strikes in the meatpacking and steel industries and large-scale race riots in Chicago and other cities. Anarchist attacks on Wall Street produced fears of radicals and terrorists. The Irish Catholic and German communities were outraged at Wilson's perceived favoritism of their traditional enemy Great Britain, and his political position was critically weakened after he suffered a stroke in 1919 that left him severely disabled. While Palmer focused his campaign on attacking Johnson as a "socialist" and a "Bolshevik sympathizer", Johnson focused on stressing the need for isolationism and neutrality, blamed Wilson for the current economic crisis, and mostly avoided attacking Palmer himself. Palmer's strategy backfired, as even some conservative unions supported Johnson instead. Johnson won by a landslide with a victory margin of 31.6%. The Socialist Party of America also, for the first time, achieved a popular vote count in the millions. It was the first election held in which women had the right to vote in all states, which drastically increased the popular vote from 18.5 million to 27 million.